Hoopes Reservoir is a reservoir in

New Castle County, Delaware New Castle County is the northernmost of the three counties of the U.S. state of Delaware (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex). As of the 2020 census, the population was 570,719, making it the most populous county in Delaware, with nearly 60% of th ...

. The reservoir first impounded the water of Old Mill Stream and Red Clay Creek in 1932, with a dam built by the city of

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington (Unami language, Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish colonization of the Americas, Swedish settlement in North ...

, for municipal drinking water. It has a water surface of 187 acres, a maximum capacity of 11,000

acre-feet The acre-foot is a non- SI unit of volume equal to about commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water, and river flows. An acr ...

, and a normal capacity of 6300 acre-feet. The reservoir and its surroundings have been open to the public since 1971. It is the largest reservoir in Delaware. The dam, Edgar M. Hoopes Dam (National ID # DE00015), is a concrete gravity dam originally built in 1932 and restructured several times since. It is 135 feet high and 845 feet in length at the crest. Its namesake, Edgar M. Hoopes, was Chief Engineer of the Wilmington Water Department from 1913 through 1918, according to a plaque on site.

References

{{authority control Reservoirs in Delaware Bodies of water in New Castle County, Delaware